Page 122 of One to Watch

Ruby:Oh, Cat.

Cat:Don’t judge, you’re part of this fandom now too. Anyway, according to the Redditors, this isn’t the producers messing with you—Asher really did leave the show.

Ruby:And I presume we’re also done with Luc forever?

Cat:Farewell, Luc, you beautiful, beautiful douchenozzle.

Ruby:Do you think he was good in bed?

Cat:Men that good-looking rarely are, but Bea certainly seemed happy the next morning, so I guess maybe?

Ruby:Plus the whole slap/kiss thing in New York was vaguely kinky, I bet he’s not totally vanilla.

Cat:Well, hopefully for Bea’s sake, she at least got to have some good sex before she got totally blindsided.

Ruby:So the two men she has left are Sam and this other guy, Ray, who’s like sort of her ex but also was apparently engaged to another woman until very recently?

Cat:All of Ray’s social media feeds have been set to private or deleted entirely, which isn’t surprising considering the circumstances of his newfound fame. But some intrepid bloggers dug through his friends’ feeds, and they found out that he’s an attorney living in Atlanta, that he and Bea worked together in Los Angeles in their early twenties, and there are pictures of him with a perfectly lovely looking woman who we can guess is the recent fiancée in question.

Ruby:Has anything like this ever happened on the show before?

Cat:We’ve seen exes show up from time to time, but they’re usually dismissed pretty quickly, like, “Oh God, Brian, why would you think this was a good idea?” Very occasionally, we’ve seen men ask to be members of the cast, and sometimes they even get to be, but that usually happens way earlier in the season. To have this guy show up on the precipice of the finale is pretty unprecedented—not to mention that Bea actually walked out of the ceremony before asking him to stay, so we have no idea if she’s even going to!

Ruby:So if she doesn’t, then what, it’s only Sam for the finale and I automatically win everything?

Cat:That’s one way of looking at it.

Ruby:It’s the way I choose, Cat.

Cat:Speaking of choice, we know that you have lots of options for cook-at-home meal kits, but “Je ne sais quoi” kits offer something special: a secret ingredient to add to every recipe. I’ve been using the kits at home, and they’re super fun—you get a little envelope with a red “X” to add to your meal, and they do always have that extra something special—if you will, that “Je ne sais quoi.”

Ruby:Wow, so you literally do not know what … is in your food.

Cat:You literally don’t! It’s just as much of a mystery as next week’s Main Squeeze finale. We’ll be back right after this.

Bea hadn’t spoken a word since Ray’s arrival and Asher’s abrupt departure. Over Johnny’s pleas and Lauren’s protests, she simply walked out of the courtyard, then holed up with Alison and refused to leave the wardrobe room until the producers gave in: They declared that they were finished filming in Amboise and would drive to Paris the next morning as planned. Bea didn’t leave Alison’s side for the entire trip, and she ignored anyone else who tried to speak to her.

Once they arrived in Paris and the producers let Bea into her hotel room, she double-locked the door and crawled into bed, fully clothed. She was exhausted from being up most of the previous two nights—first a night of bliss with Luc, then a night of agony tossing and turning and wondering how this all could have gone so wrong. She was grateful that her first day in Paris was a travel day with no scheduled filming so she could finally get some rest, but try as she might, bone-tired as she was, sleep still wouldn’t come. Bea thought back to the first night of filming, to that anonymous man who’d taken one look at her and walked away. How ironic that Bea’s fears that others would follow in his footsteps never materialized until now—and when a man she truly cared for finally did choose to leave, it wasn’t because of Bea’s looks, but her lies.

Bea knew on some level that she wasn’t the only one to blame—that Asher was jealous and judgmental, that he’d made her feel insecure throughout this process, that he was probably already looking for an excuse to bail in order to have done so that quickly and completely. But here in this lovely hotel room with a view of the Seine, Bea felt hollow without him, like some essential part of her had been scooped out.

The sun rose, and Bea’s start time for her day of shooting came and went. The producers called and called, so she turned off the ringer on her hotel phone. Who was she even supposed to see today—Sam or Ray? She hadn’t technically said that Ray could stay, but she suspected Lauren would insist: It would be an awfully boring finale if Sam were the only man left. And besides, she thought, Ray broke off his engagement and flew all the way here. To see her. To try and work things out between them. To stop her from getting engaged to someone else. Someone else like Asher … the man she’d thought might really be her husband. And now, because of Ray, he was gone for good. Was that reason enough to dismiss Ray outright? Or was there a chance, after everything, that they really were meant to be together?

There was too much to think through, too many conflicting emotions to parse with no clean point of entry. Lacking any better ideas, Bea decided her best available option was to take a long, hot bath.

Her suite’s bathroom had bleached wooden floors, gleaming slate walls, and a gigantic soaking tub made of smooth white ceramic. Bea piled her hair into a bun and slipped into the steaming water, feeling like some tiny portion of the awfulness of the past twenty-four hours was beginning to leach out of her. Bea closed her eyes and willed herself, for just a moment, to relax.

That’s when the knocking started.

“Fucking fuck,” Bea muttered, keeping her eyes closed and willing the knocker to leave her alone. She ducked her head under the water, but when she came back up a few seconds later, the knocking was even louder, and was now accompanied by shouted entreaties.

“Bea, come on!” Lauren’s voice was muffled from the hallway, yet still had a piercing quality that was completely impossible to ignore. “I’ll stand out here and scream all day if I have to, you know I will! We have the whole floor, so there’s no one to complain! Come on, Bea! We have a finale to shoot, and you can’t hide in there forever! Aren’t you hungry? I brought pastries!”

Bea exhaled audibly. The truth was, she was starving. And as much as she wanted to shut herself away in this bathroom until everyone she’d ever met (and the collective consciousness of the Internet) had forgotten she’d ever agreed to do this show, she knew that wasn’t entirely tenable. So she dragged herself out of the tub, toweled her hair dry as best she could, and wrapped herself in an all-too-thin cotton robe before opening her door.

“Du Pain et Des Idées is your favorite, right?” Lauren affected an air of nonchalance. “That bakery up in the tenth? I sent a PA to get these for you.”

“You think you’re going to bring me a pistachio elephant ear and all will be instantly forgiven?” Bea narrowed her eyes, but she took the pastry Lauren held out to her all the same, and couldn’t help but utter a small groan of pleasure as she took the first perfect bite. Lauren came into the room and shut the door behind her.